1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to Interim Connection Spaces for spectral data, and in particular, to the generation of Interim Connection Spaces for spectral data based on a space of illuminants.
2. Related Background Art
There is an increasing trend for color imaging applications to process and utilize spectral data, and/or to perform color processing in a spectral color space. For example, it has become common to characterize color devices such as scanners, cameras, printers and displays, in terms of their spectral responsivity, such as by obtaining a so-called spectral device profile. Once a spectral characterization of a device is obtained, operations such as transforming color data from a source device to a destination device, gamut mapping, etc., can be performed in the full spectral space.
As another example, some modern image capture devices can capture color image data in spectral or extended color spaces. In this regard, the use of spectral data such as spectral reflectance of objects and spectral power distribution of illuminants promises to yield even more advantages in the near future. Ultimately, one goal of spectral color reproduction is to produce color reproductions with remarkably high color fidelity, perhaps even matching the original scene on the spectral level. In the case of reflective objects, for example, a reproduction with a spectral match would have the same color as the original object under any illuminant.
Spectral characterization of color devices, and development of multi-spectral devices such as multi-spectral cameras and multi-spectral printers, could form the basis of a spectral color management workflow that can have very useful applications in everyday consumer products. For example, such technologies could allow online shoppers to print their own “virtual swatches” of fabrics, as detailed in the paper “Answering Hunt's Web Shopping Challenge: Spectral Color Management for a Virtual Swatch” by Rosen et al., Proceedings of the IS&T/SID 9th Color Imaging Conference, pp. 267-272. Another application of spectral color management in computer aided design/computer aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) applications allows manufacturers to visualize and demonstrate preliminary design ideas by simulation, before actually building a costly prototype.
While the use of spectral data can provide many advantages, such as reducing metameric color shifts, using spectral data presents some challenges. In particular, the dimensionality of spectral data typically is high compared to other types of data, such as calorimetric data. For example, conventional colorimetry-based spaces such as CIEXYZ, CIELAB, and CIECAM02, etc., have three dimensions, while full spectral space typically has thirty-one dimensions or more. This high dimensionality can significantly increase the amount of data that must be manipulated and/or stored by applications utilizing full spectral data. Consequently, these applications can suffer from increased memory requirements and decreased computational performance.
A known approach to this problem is the construction of Interim Connection Spaces (ICSs), which are of lower dimensionality than the full spectral space, for example, with five or higher dimensions as opposed to the 31 or higher dimensions of a full spectral space. In particular, typical Interim Connection Spaces provide a way to project full spectral data to lower-dimensional data with a small loss of accuracy. Processing can then occur on the lower-dimensional data, and if needed, results of the processing can be transformed into full spectrum data.